The effect of decreasing delays in appointments on patients' failure to keep appointments.

Patients who fail to keep their appointments for mental-health services are not likely to receive optimal treatment for their disorders and valuable professional time is not used efficiently. One means to decrease failures to keep appointments is to decrease delays in appointments. This study examined the effects of decreasing delays in appointments on appointment keeping for patients who were scheduled for initial intake appointments at a day-treatment center. Decreasing delays in appointments from 5.44 days during baseline to 1.67 days during intervention resulted in a significant decrease in failures to keep appointments from 34 to 13% (P less than 0.05). Reducing delays in appointments, therefore, can be an effective means to reduce failures to keep appointments and increase the likelihood that psychiatric patients who are initially seeking services at mental-health programs will receive prompt attention to their disorders.